Exodus

Books of the Torah
1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy

Exodus (Greek: έξοδος, exodos = "departure") is the second book of the Jewish Torah and of the Christian Old Testament. It tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the Mountain of God (Mount Sinai). There Yahweh, through Moses, gives the Israelites their laws and enters into a covenant with them, by which he will give them the land of Canaan in return for their faithfulness. The book ends with the construction of the Tabernacle.

According to tradition, Exodus and the other four books of the Torah were written by Moses in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BC. Modern biblical scholarship sees it reaching its final textual form around 450 BC.

Contents

Title

The title "Exodus" derives from the Greek Ἔξοδος, Exodos, meaning "departure, out-going," the name given to the book in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Jewish scriptures made between the 3rd to 1st centuries BC. In Hebrew it is called Shemot (שְׁמוֹת) from the opening phrase Ve-eleh shemot, ואלה שמות, "These are the names", a practice in line with the other four books of the Torah.

Summary

Bondage in Egypt

Pharaoh, fearful of the Israelites' numbers, orders his people to throw all newborn Hebrew (Israelite) boys into the Nile. A Levite woman saves her baby by setting him adrift on the river in an ark of bulrushes. Pharaoh's daughter finds the child, and names him Moses, and brings him up as her own. But Moses is aware of his Hebrew origins, and one day, when grown, kills an Egyptian overseer who is beating a Hebrew man, and has to flee into Midian[1] . While he was herding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro[2] on Mount Horeb,[3] Moses encounters God, and God tells him to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites into(Canaan) the land promised to Abraham.

On Moses' return to Egypt, God instructs him to appear before Pharaoh and inform him of God's demand that he let God's people go. Moses and his brother Aaron do so, but Pharaoh refuses. God causes a series of plagues, but Pharaoh does not relent. God instructs Moses to institute the Passover sacrifice among the Israelites, and then God kills all the firstborn children of the Egyptians. Pharaoh agrees to let the Israelites go. Moses explains the meaning of the Passover: it is for Israel's salvation from Egypt, so that the Israelites will not be required to sacrifice their own sons, but to redeem them.

Journey through the wilderness to Sinai

The Exodus begins. The Israelites, 600,000 men plus women and children and a mixed multitude,with their flocks and herds, set out for the mountain of God. The plausability of this number is suspect to say the least; assuming the "mixed multitude" of women and children swelled the total number to roughly 2.5 million people, a mass of such size would have been a logistical nightmare. Standing ten abreast, the Israelites would have formed a line 150 miles long. Moreover, the desert ecosystem of the Sinai peninsula simply could not have provided enough food and water to sustain that many people. Indeed, the present population of the Sinai is estimated to be no greater than 38,000.[4]

Pharaoh pursues the Israelites,and Yahweh destroys Pharaoh's army at the crossing of the Red, or Reed, Sea - the Hebrew words yam suf can be translated either way. The Israelites celebrate their deliverance with the Song of the Sea. The Israelites continue their journey, but immediately begin to complain of the hardships. In the Wilderness of Sin they complain about the lack of food and speak with longing of Egypt, and Yahweh sends them quail and manna to eat. At Rephidim, he provides water miraculously from the rock of Meribah. The Amalekites attack the Israelites, and Yahweh orders an eternal war against them. The Israelites arrive at the mountain of God, where Moses' father-in-law Jethro visits Moses; at his suggestion Moses appoints judges over Israel.

The term "mountain of God" is problematic. In cases where the mountain is named, it is given two appellations, Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai. Scholars disagree as to whether there were in fact two mountains, and to complicate matters no contemporary geographical correlate for either possibility has been found.[5]

At Sinai: Covenant and laws

The Israelites arrive at the mountain of God. Yahweh asks whether they will agree to be his people, and the people accept. The people gather at the foot of the mountain, and with thunder and lightning, fire and clouds of smoke, and the sound of trumpets, and the trembling of the mountain, God appears on the peak, and the people see the cloud and hear the "voice".[6] Moses and Aaron are told to ascend the mountain.[7] God pronounces the Ten Commandments (the Ethical Decalogue) in the hearing of all Israel.[8]

Moses goes up the mountain into the presence of God, who pronounces the Covenant Code,[9] (a detailed code of ritual and civil law), and promises Canaan to the Israelites if they obey.[10] Moses descends and writes down Yahweh's words and the people agree to keep them. Yahweh calls Moses up the mountain together with Aaron and the elders of Israel, and they feast in the presence of Yahweh. Yahweh calls Moses up the mountain to receive a set of stone tablets containing the law, and he and Joshua go up, leaving Aaron in charge. Yahweh appears on the mountain "like a consuming fire" and calls Moses to go up, and Moses goes up the mountain.[11]

Yahweh gives Moses instructions for the construction of the tabernacle so that God can dwell permanently amongst the Israelites, as well as the priestly vestments, the altar and its appurtenances, the ritual to be used to ordain the priests, and the daily sacrifices to be offered. Aaron is appointed as the first High Priest, and the priesthood is to be hereditary in his line. Then Yahweh gives to Moses the two stone tablets containing these instructions, written by God's own finger.

Aaron makes a golden calf, which the people worship. God informs Moses and threatens to kill them all, but Moses intercedes for them. Moses comes down from the mountain, smashes the tablets in anger, and commands the Levites to massacre the disobedient. Yahweh commands Moses to make two new tablets on which He will personally write the words that were on the first tablets. Moses ascends the mountain, God dictates the Ten Commandments (the Ritual Decalogue)[12], and Moses writes them on the tablets.[13]

Moses descends from the mountain, and his face is transformed, so that from that time onwards he has to hide his face with a veil. Moses assembles the Israelites and repeats to them the commandments he has received from Yahweh, to keep the Sabbath and to construct the Tabernacle. "And all the construction of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting was finished, and the children of Israel did according to everything that Yahweh had commanded Moses",[14] and Yahweh dwelt in the Tabernacle, and ordered the travels of the Israelites.[15]

Composition

There is no single, universally accepted theory regarding the origins of Exodus; instead various theories are currently advanced placing it in a variety of different periods ranging from the 2nd millennium BC to the period after 300 BC. Jews and Christians have traditionally understood the Torah to have been written by Moses. The most well-regarded scholarly theory, the documentary hypothesis, describes Exodus as comprising three sources, combined c 400 BC.[16]

Mosaic authorship

Main article: Mosaic authorship

The traditional belief in both Jewish and Christian circles was that Moses was the author of all five books of the Torah. This theory is still advanced by Orthodox Jewish and evangelical Christian scholars but is not considered viable by most scholars.

Documentary hypothesis

Main article: Documentary hypothesis

According to most scholarly analyses, the Yahwist source (J) provides the main narrative of Exodus, supplemented by the Elohist (E).[16] The priestly editors (c 400 BC) reworked the JE source and added substantial material, such as the description of the tabernacle in chapters 35-40.[16]

19th century biblical criticism concluded that the Torah was composed of four originally independent documents, known as the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source. Of these the Elohist is identified as uniquely responsible for the episode of the golden calf, and the Priestly source as uniquely responsible for the chiastic, and monotonous, instructions for creating the tabernacle, vestments, and ritual objects, and the account of their creation. The poetic Song of the sea, and the prose Covenant Code, both in Exodus, were identified as smaller independent works embedded in the main documents. In 1878 Julius Wellhausen, in his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, argued that the Priestly source was the last to be composed, in the 6th century BC, and his formulation became the consensual view.

The southern Jahwist source promotes Aaron, the progenitor of the southern, Aaronite priesthood. Meanwhile, it portrays Moses in a less flattering light. The northern Elohist denigrates Aaron as instigating worship of the golden calf. It also includes the Covenant Code, incorporated from an earlier source.

Scholars disagree over whether the sources were written documents.[16] Documentary approaches such as Wellhausen's classic formulation see it as an act of redaction, in which an editor (usually seen as Ezra) took the four sources - a 9th century Yahwist, 8th century Elohist, and 6th century Priestly source (the Deuteronomist is not present in Exodus) - and combined them with minimal changes. Thus Richard Elliott Friedman's The Bible with Sources Revealed (2003) is a modern documentary hypothesis more or less identical with Wellhausen but accepting Yehezkel Kaufmann's dating of the Priestly source to the early 7th century. By contrast, John Van Seters and Rolf Rendtorff see the Torah as a process of progressive supplementation in which generations of authors added to and edited each other, although Van Seters sees the final author as a late, 5th century, Yahwist, Rendtorff as a Priestly school. R. N. Whybray, whose The Making of the Pentateuch (1987) was a seminal critique of the methodology and assumptions of the documentary hypothesis, has proposed that the creation of Exodus and the Torah was the action of a single author, working from a host of fragments. The only areas of agreement between these views is that the terms "Yahwist", "Priestly" and "Deuteronomist" do have some meaning in terms of identifiable and differentiable content and style, and that the final Torah emerged in the 5th century BC.

Biblical minimalism

Still a minority view today is the so-called Biblical minimalism school, which holds that the Torah is a very late composition, created in the 4th century BC or even later.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Midian: the desert region between Egypt and the Negev.
  2. ↑ Moses' father-in-law is named Reuel and Jethro in the Torah, and Hobeb in Judges. Hobeb also appears in the Torah (in Numbers), but is identified there as a son of Reuel.
  3. ↑ Horeb: an alternative name for mount Sinai
  4. ↑ Oxford History of the Biblical World, Michael Coogan, Editor; Oxford University Press: 1998, pp. 69-70
  5. ↑ Oxford History of the Biblical World, Michael Coogan, Editor; Oxford University Press: 1998, p. 67
  6. ↑ "Voice", Hebrew beqol. This normally means voice, but a few verses earlier (Exodus 19:16) it has been used to mean "thunder", in the context of the thunder and lightning from the mountain. It is therefore not clear exactly what "beqol" means here. The implication of Exodus 20:18-19 is that the people hear only thunder and trumpets and for this reason appoint Moses as their mediator with God: "And the people saw the thunder and the lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking...And they said [to Moses], "You speak with us, so we may listen, but let God not speak with us or we will die." Some translations therefore have "thunder" instead of "voice".
  7. ↑ It is not totally clear who goes up the mountain - Exodus 19:24 has Yahweh instructing Moses and Aaron to up while the people and priests remain below, but at Exodus 19:22 the priests are told they may approach Yahweh after consecrating themselves.
  8. ↑ A slightly different version of the Commandments is given at Deuteronomy 5, the most striking variation being in the reason given for keeping the Sabbath: in Exodus, the Sabbath is kept because God made the heavens and earth in six days and rested on the seventh; in Deuteronomy, it is a memorial for Israel's deliverance from Egypt.
  9. ↑ Exodus21:1-23:19
  10. ↑ Exodus 21-23
  11. ↑ This passage has a confusing sequence of events, as reflected in this summary.
  12. ↑ The Ritual Decalogue, unlike the Ethical Decalogue, is explicitly called the "ten commandments" - see Exodus 34:28
  13. ↑ At Exodus 34:1 God has told Moses that he, God, will personally write on the tablets, but at Exodus 34:27 he tells Moses to write them. Also, although God tells Moses that he is about to receive a copy of the first set of tablets, Exodus 24:12 makes clear that the first tablets contained the instructions for the tabernacle, while Exodus 34:27-28 makes it equally clear that the second set contain the Ritual Decalogue.
  14. ↑ Exodus 39:32
  15. ↑ This is a broad summary of the final verses, Exodus 40:34-38
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.

Further reading

External links

Online versions and translations of Exodus

Jewish translations

Christian translations

Other links

Preceded by
Genesis		 Hebrew Bible Followed by
Leviticus
Christian Old Testament